Monday, December 27, 2010

...And the good news continues to come in! Adding to a string of nations returning to the ESC stage, today brought news of Hungarian broadcaster MTV (no, not that MTV...we're talking Magyar Televízió!) confirming that they will, in fact, be represented in Düsseldorf! That makes the 4th nation returning to the competition (including Austria, Italy, and San Marino). Hungary's last participation was back in 2009, with stage performer Zoltan "Zoli" Ádok's disco-pop number "Dance with Me", which didn't qualify for the finals. (Zoli's performance did, however, win the infamous "Barbara Dex Award", a dubious honor presented to the evening's worst-dressed performer.)

The jury is still out on Slovakia, so to speak. They had said back in early December that 2011 was a no-go, but rumors of their participation still hovered around them. Supposedly, they had applied to be on the provisional list of participants, with the option of withdrawing their names by Christmastime. We haven't heard any confirmations one way or the other, so we'll have to wait for the EBU's official verdict on who's in and who's out, which should come any day now. If Slovakia rejoins the competition, that means that the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest will be tied with 2008 for the record as the biggest event ever, with 43 participating nations! Unfortunately, applications from Liechtenstein and Qatar to join the EBU were rejected for the time being, so we won't see any debuts from them (or any other nation) at the moment. But there's always 2012!